Dear Dr. Klein: Your case is less that of your academic freedom and more, I think, about your ethical duty as a professor to treat all students fairly, that is, in accordance with the principle of equal protection, which means, not showing favoritism to anyone. But perhaps I'm just less focused on your relationship with an increasingly a…
Dear Dr. Klein: Your case is less that of your academic freedom and more, I think, about your ethical duty as a professor to treat all students fairly, that is, in accordance with the principle of equal protection, which means, not showing favoritism to anyone. But perhaps I'm just less focused on your relationship with an increasingly authoritarian university entity seeking to micromanage your teaching and more on your duty to your students.
A related story. In the sixties, my father was chairman of the Dep't of Electrical Engineering of Howard University in Washington D.C. He was once held at knifepoint by one of his students, during one of the campus riots that went on then, who was demanding that the "F" that he had received from my father be raised to a "B." (These days of course the demand would be that the "F" be changed to an "A," and perhaps no "F" would ever have been given at all, regardless of the student's failure to perform.) My father refused. I believe that the police were informed, and appropriate action taken. But that was then, and sadly, this is now.
Dear Dr. Klein: Your case is less that of your academic freedom and more, I think, about your ethical duty as a professor to treat all students fairly, that is, in accordance with the principle of equal protection, which means, not showing favoritism to anyone. But perhaps I'm just less focused on your relationship with an increasingly authoritarian university entity seeking to micromanage your teaching and more on your duty to your students.
A related story. In the sixties, my father was chairman of the Dep't of Electrical Engineering of Howard University in Washington D.C. He was once held at knifepoint by one of his students, during one of the campus riots that went on then, who was demanding that the "F" that he had received from my father be raised to a "B." (These days of course the demand would be that the "F" be changed to an "A," and perhaps no "F" would ever have been given at all, regardless of the student's failure to perform.) My father refused. I believe that the police were informed, and appropriate action taken. But that was then, and sadly, this is now.